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Mountain Stages
"This is not Disneyland, or Hollywood. I'll give you an example: I've read that I flew up the hills and mountains of France. But you don't fly up a hill. You struggle slowly and painfully up a hill, and maybe, if you work very hard, you get to the top ahead of everybody else."
Lance Armstrong
Here we go....the mountain stages of the Tour de France, where legends are made and pasty white English cyclists come to suffer.
Enough of those long flat dusty (and dare I say it 'boring') stages for the sprinters....we want hairpins soaring up to where snow may still lie in mid summer, the air is thin and car engines overheat. Where legends such as Coppi and Van Impe, Pantani & Rasmussen blow the peloton to bits as soon as the road rears up.
And that's probably what will happen to us, blown to bits by successive mountain stages that none of us have much experience of.
This is the battleground, this is where our Tour will be won or lost and the months of training will be tested to the full. Some of these stages are simply brutal, ie stage 16 with 135 miles, 3 major climbs as well as a summit finish on the Aubisque - ouch ! We're not in the Peak District anymore.
We've all ridden mountain stages with varying degrees of success, but never in succession and never in the Pyrenees. The mythical cols of the Galibier, the Iseran, the Portet d'Aspet and the Aubisque await us. I want my Mummy.
The Beasts Stages
Stage 7
Wednesday July 4, 2007
Bourg-en-Bresse - Le-Grand-Bornand, 197 km
Km 35: Côte de Corlier, 5,9 km at a 5,5%
Km 122: Côte des Petits-Bois, 7,1 km at a 4,4%
Km 134: Côte Peguin, 4,3 km at a 4,1%
Km 183: Col de la Colombière, 16 km at a 6,7%
Stage 8
Thursday July 5, 2007
Le-Grand-Bornand - Tignes, 165 km
Km 15: Col du Marais, 3.8 km at a 4.1%
Km 21: Côte du Bouchet-Mont-Charvin, 1.6 km at a 7.6%
Km 46: Col de Tamié, 9.5 km at a 4%
Km 99: Cormet de Roselend, 19.9 km at a 6%
Km 137: Montée de Hauteville, 15.3 km at a 4.7% Km 163: Le Lac (Tignes), 17.9 km at a 5.5%
Stage 9
Sunday July 8, 2007
Val-d'Isère - Briançon, 161 km
Km 15: Col de l'Iseran, 15 km at a 6%
Km 99: Col du Télégraphe, 12 km at a 6.7%
Km 122: Col du Galibier, 17.5 km at a 6.9%
Stage 14
Friday July 13, 2007
Mazamet - Plateau-de-Beille, 197 km
Km 9: Côte de Sarraille, 9 km at a 5.2%
Km 146: Port de Pailhères, 16.8 km at a 7.2%
Km 197: Plateau-de-Beille, 15.9 km at a 7.9%
Stage 15 (Etape du Tour Stage)
Saturday July 14, 2007
Foix - Loudenvielle - Le Louron, 196 km
Km 27: Col de Port, 11.4 km at a 5.3%
Km 98: Col de Portet d'Aspet, 5.7 km at a 6.9%
Km 114: Col de Menté, 7 km at a 8.1%
Km 159: Port de Balès, 19.2 km at a 6.2%
Km 184: Col de Peyresourde, 9.7 km at a 7.8%
This is the 'Etape du Tour' stage, arguably one of the hardest routes since the event began and certainly the toughest since 1998 when over 3000 riders failed to make it to the finish over the Croix de Fer, Telegraphe, Galibier and the summit finish at Les Deux Alpes.
Already many cautionary words have already been written about this stage involving 5 very tough climbs and enough distance to make the strongest legs turn to jelly, especially at this stage in the tour. With an estimated 5000 metres of climbing on the ascents proper alone, an experienced rider can expect to be cycling upwards for over five hours, an inexperienced rider won't finish.
Cycling Weekly is starkly recommending that unless riders finished this years Etape in under 9 hours, don't bother to attempt this. I (Mark) took 11 hours total , 8 hours moving, for that stage (and didn't go up l'Alpe d'Huez) so am under no illusions that training has to go up to new levels to avoid becoming a Pyrenean casualty. And then shortly afterwards there are another 218 km's and four more climbs on stage 16....
Stage 16
Orthez - Gourette - Col d'Aubisque, 218 km
Km 81: Col de Larraut, 14.2 km at a 8%
Km 132: Col de la Pierre Saint-Martin, 14 km at a 5.2%
Km 175: Col de Marie-Blanque, 9.3 km at a 7.7%
Km 218: Col d'Aubisque, 16.4 km at a 6.9%
If this stage is completed - Paris is surely within grasp.
Please note, if you work for Monsieur Prudhomme or ASO and aren't happy that I've lifted some images from the TdF website, let me know and I'll remove them - Mark.